A leader running on empty
Toto Wolff leads the constructors’ championship and spent Monday explaining why that lead is shrinking. Mercedes cannot afford to keep pace with the upgrade packages McLaren and Ferrari have thrown at their cars since the summer break.
“We haven’t got the money to put developments on the car,” Wolff said. “I said it before, we are trying to evenly split that through the season, based on our calculations of when we can bring the biggest updates and optimizing the championship points. We just can’t do what we can’t do.”
He framed it as arithmetic rather than complaint. “That’s why it is a development race. If you bring an upgrade, each of the top teams will have a couple of tenths in it, at least, and that’s what you lose. So, yeah, the ride has been a bit tougher than at the beginning of the year.”
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How the season turned
Mercedes finished second in the 2025 constructors’ standings and then buried the field. Kimi Antonelli and George Russell won the first six races of 2026 between them and eight of the opening 10. Ferrari picked off Spain and Great Britain with Lewis Hamilton’s side of the garage rebuilt around him, and Ferrari now sit second, 87 points back.
McLaren went winless through 10 rounds after taking the 2025 constructors’ title. Then Lando Norris won in Hungary, and won again at Zandvoort on Sunday. Both victories arrived after a major upgrade package landed on the car.
Antonelli, second in the Dutch Grand Prix and 20 years old on Tuesday, did not pretend otherwise. “We’re clearly not the fastest car anymore on the grid,” he said. “We’re probably second or third, at least in Sunday’s race, and McLaren has taken a huge step, especially since Hungary, since the big upgrade package they brought.”
Holding something back
Every team works under a $215 million cap, and Wolff hinted Mercedes have parked a share of theirs for the closing rounds. “You will see if toward the end of the season the other teams are going to be able to deploy as much stuff onto the car as they do now,” he said. “Someone might have a different strategy in spending more at the beginning and in the middle of the year than toward the end.”
Antonelli says a package is already in build. Whether it arrives before the gap closes is the question that decides this title.
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